The Quest for Structure and Discipline

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I’m hoping for some inspirational stories here. I don’t do all that well without some kind of imposed structure on my life, and that’s exactly what I don’t have right now. On paper, my life should be perfect, in the sense that I theoretically have the time to do many of the things I want to do. I work a part-time, very flexible job, and in my off-time I manage the household and work on getting my fiction published. I don’t even have any kids to complicate my life.

Because of epilepsy, I currently am not able to drive, so I do a lot of work from home (writing grants.) I’ve been dealing with severe fatigue/brain fog due to anticonvulsants but I’m transitioning to a new med now so I’m optimistic that will help. My boss told me she doesn’t give a shit when I show up in the office or how much I work from home, as long as I communicate and get the work done. That’s good because it costs me $50 round trip to Uber to work. I should be dancing in the streets to have so much freedom, but I find my life so much harder to manage that way. I push off my work until the weekend and then my weekend is extra stressful.

I didn’t realize how little structure and routine I had built into my life until I started this free mini-program called Tiny Habits, designed by a behavioral psychologist. The gist is you take habits you want to form and attach small, easy actions to already established habits, which he calls ‘‘anchor habits.’’ Those are things you already do regularly.

That’s when I realized I have no goddamn anchor habits! Outside of taking my meds at 9am and 9pm, I’ve got nothing. I don’t even think I eat breakfast consistently. My mood has been relatively stable for a change, but I feel like I’m never getting enough work done. I left Facebook, thinking it would help with my discipline, and while I don’t regret the change it hasn’t made much difference in my productivity.

Is there anyone here who has managed to self-impose structure on a too-flexible lifestyle? Please give me your tips.

2

I wish I had some tips for you.
I work from my house also. I find it very had to get motivated on some projects (I’m a EE/product designer), especially if they are uninteresting. So, I tend to procrastinate (SDMB, anyone?) until I feel guilty, and then put in a lot of hours.
The one thing I am consistent about is working out, but that’s because I enjoy it so much.

I guess that if you are getting your work done, maybe the system you have is actually working for you - maybe you need a bit of stress to get going!

3

Have you tried simply writing out a schedule for yourself? Maybe at night before you go to sleep, you could write a schedule for the next day. Wake up, eat, exercise a little, do some work, do a chore, whatever.

4

I wrote one up yesterday using my Calendar.

Work from 10-6pm, cook whole frozen chicken and make broth at some point in the middle, then write from 7-9pm.

I woke up at 9am, took my meds, ate breakfast, and went back to sleep for two hours. Then I obsessed over the budget for a while, talked to some friends, and wasted time on the Dope.

Sigh.

(I think I’m going to have to resort to one of those site blocker programs that blocks sites/programs during certain hours of the day. I have to get hard core with myself.)

5

You set certain times/days to do certain things, and stick to them. That will introduce limitations on when you can get other things done, which introduces an incentive to stick to your schedule.

I go to the YMCA to work out three mornings each week. I won’t run errands at any time of day other than mornings (to avoid traffic), or on weekends, so that leaves me two mornings a week to get errands done. Certain recurring items of housework need to be lined up on successive days to be effective. I won’t work on my writing when I might be interrupted, which means that every evening after I put the kid to bed, I spend one hour watching TV with my husband (because I sort of like him), then I turn into a pumpkin until bedtime, to get my work done. The family insists on eating dinner every night, so there’s an hour+ automatically scheduled out of every gosh-darn day.

All these times and limitations are self-imposed. We are a work-at-home family; in theory we could all be eating Cheetos and having a Harry Potter marathon at 3 a.m. But we just *don’t. * Because then we couldn’t get up to get back into our routines and chaos would ensue. And chaos leads to low self-esteem. And we aren’t into that.

So it sounds like there’s a grain of truth in this Anchor Habits thing. Set a few hard-and-fast scheduled items, and that will help the rest fall into place.

I suggest you choose some things that revolve around your husband’s schedule, because that’s more or less fixed. Commit to cooking and eating dinner together every evening, or whatever. I also suggest you choose a specific time to work out, for mental health reasons, and specific times for a few items of housework (a laundry day, a vacuuming day, a picking-up day), also for mental health reasons.

6

Set aside a room - or an area of a room - for your work. When you are there, you are working. Others in the family should be told to not disturb you when you are at work.

7

Sattua, that is all brilliant and truly helpful. Thank you.

I do have some fixed points in my schedule, just not enough.

I have D&D Monday nights, which is really stressful because I work in office that day and usually have to rush home and get ready for company.

I have writer’s group every other Tuesday, plus Sr. Weasel is usually home on Tuesdays at least part of the day, so we do lunch after my therapy usually.

The cleaners come every other Thursday so I do a full household de-cluttering before they come over and it works wonders for my mental health/allergies/general cleanliness.

And Friday mornings I walk and lunch with my father in law.

I think all of that keeps me from getting too depressed but the rest of my responsibilities fall into this nebulous ‘‘I’ll do it during my free time’’ rather than hammering down a specific chunk of time each week to address certain kinds of tasks. I think maybe I just need to get more specific.

8

Probably daily scheduled items are more useful than weekly scheduled items. Also, items that cause you immediate inconvenience when they don’t get done are better than items that feel optional.

9

Can you clarify what you mean by this? Thanks.

10

Just that something that happens once a week is less restricting than something that happens every day, so it has a smaller effect on your overall schedule.

11

I’ve been working from home since I graduated college in 2001, and from my own home by my lonesome self since 2005.

Most important thing is to have an office space that is your work space. Treat it like your actual away-from-home office. You get up, do your morning stuff, GO to the work space. At lunch time, leave the workspace and do your lunch thing, after lunch return to the work space for the rest of the day until the end of the work day when you get up and leave, turning off the lights and possibly closing the door.

Not to say I never use my work space for other stuff…but now that I have a smartphone on which to surf the Web, I don’t really need to sit at the work computer all evening. I do pop in once at night to take my meds and check my email (I keep my meds at my desk so I remember to take them)

Like Quartz says, when you’re at work you’re at work. Even if that happens to be in a room at home.

Making time to work out is key. My gym days are Monday, Weds and Saturday and I know I can be flexible if need-be. I don’t let much get in the way of my gym days but I can go Tues and Thurs if I need to. Walking is my other form of exercise and I have two high-energy dogs that literally, physically, remind me to get off my ass and walk them if I am chillin’ too long. It’s difficult to manage the outdoor part of my exercise routine if it’s hot as balls or cold as frozen balls (in Ohio - I’m sure it’s the same as Michigan) so I ended up splurging on a very fancy elliptical machine that I use because I spent a lot of money on it so I will hate myself if I don’t.

Exercise is a priority and I think you know that, and you need to make it your priority and thus your anchors.

Since my work time is 9-5 like everyone else, my exercise time is some time between 5 and 8, like everyone else [who can’t get up early to work out].

So, not saying you have to be the same as me with the work and exercise schedule but work and exercise should be anchors. And husband time and sleeping time. Weave in eating, cleaning and personal hygiene (yeah you gotta plan that stuff when you’re depressed), and your regular socializing and you’ve got a pretty packed schedule! I can see it now, in lovely color-coded blocks.

12

Nah, I’m sure it’s perfectly normal for your back to hurt every time you stand up.

grumble grumble unpleasant truths

Okay, so we start with core strengthening.

I wish I was as motivated to actually do the things as I am to put them in lovely color-coded blocks.

Thanks, everyone. I do have a home office. I should use it more often.

13

I think I’ve got a place to start with the anchor habits.

My usual routine, that is pretty reliable, is taking my 9am meds and then eating quick breakfast.

So taking the Tiny Habits mentality, the new habit would be after I put away my breakfast dishes, I will sit down in my home office chair.

Gotta start somewhere.

14

I had a year where everything was pretty dull at work - nothing to really use my brain on - and I could tell that between that and just getting older that my brain was starting to slow down. I was making stupid coding mistakes at work and not doing as good of research as I usually would.

I researched aging and started taking supplements that seem to have real science support behind them. Based on the reproducibility crisis, it’s plausible that half of them are still bunk, but I do feel more like I did 10 years ago and I’m doing better at work, so it does seem to be doing something.

You can read my blogs on the subject, but if you’re taking medications, you would want to run them past your doctor before starting anything. And if you’re younger than say 27, I would probably also recommend holding off as the body is still growing until 25, and it doesn’t make sense to screw with that.

15

What you wrote is not a schedule. You need to break down that 10 AM to 6 PM span into much smaller bites. Write a schedule that includes specific tasks and reasonable times to complete them.

16

Some people do best with to-do lists, some with detailed schedules. It sounds like you’re the detailed schedule type.

I find that when I do detailed schedules and break things into small, specific chunks, it can work well.

9:00-10:00 work on Project X
5 minutes walking around house/room with arms swinging
10:05-11:05 choice of work on Project X or Y
5 minutes doing deep knee bends
11:10-12:10 work on Project Y
5 minutes doing shoulder and neck rolls
12:15-1:15 lunch

etc.

To try this, be specific. Really specific. Map it down to the minute. Set alarms. Stick with it as much as possible. See if it works for you. It might work brilliantly, or you might find yourself not liking the way it breaks up your work, but either way you won’t know until you try. Do it for two weeks and then assess.

You probably won’t end up with something so rigid, though some people thrive on such schedules. The idea is just to write it down, meet the deadlines, and understand that you aren’t changing your entire life, just the next two weeks.

17

Thanks everyone! I’m using some combination of all this advice plus the feedback from the Tiny Habits advisor (I’m doing this two-week program as part of a research project for the designer) and I think I’ve got something going.

As planned, after I ate breakfast this morning and put away my dishes, I sat in my office chair, and I did work. Putting away my breakfast dishes in the anchor habit, sitting in my office chair is the new tiny habit.

Once I’m at work, I’ve got a task-oriented agenda, not a time-driven one. Example: send draft for ABC Fund to boss by COB today (almost complete!) I work from task to task more or less until a certain time of day with short breaks every 1-2 hours to do housework.

The anchor habit putting away dishes is a good trigger because I just realized I don’t only put away my dishes after breakfast, but also after lunch - meaning after I put away my lunch dishes I’ve got a ready-built trigger to go sit in my office chair again. Putting away dishes = office work.

I’m really tempted to move my fiction writing chair into my office so that I also do only fiction writing work on my writing days. So after I put away my dishes, even if it’s not a grant-writing day, it’s still a fiction-writing day and a trigger to write fiction. I need to associate entering that office with work habits. And on mornings I go into work, I’ll still do the tiny habit of going into my home office, and I’ll sit down and do a quick home budget review or something.

I think blocking chunks of time is not as helpful for me as taking cues from my environment and remaining task-oriented. With writing I’m doing a little of both - I’m tracking which days I write (with the goal to write every day) plus a tasks-based, deadline-driven schedule, i.e. finish outline of new novel by COB Wednesday. So I am not only trying to create the habit of writing but also to stay task-focused when I am writing (vs. writing 30 drafts of the same chapter, which is a problem I have.)

Now I think I can perfect this by setting up a cue to do home-based errands like scheduling appointments, planning meals, etc. on a daily basis. But one thing at a time.

18

Nice start! If you’re someone who does better with goal-based rather than schedule-based structure, always keep in mind that some big goals can be broken into smaller chunks. Again, this is only for some people, not all, but it can actually be a fun goal of its own just to figure out what works best for your particular brain.

19

For myself, I found that a “just do it” attitude was the key. That’s because my biggest hurdle to getting work done is simply getting started. There are always so many little things (productive or otherwise) that can stop me from ever starting. However, once I’ve started, I like to keep working on it until I’m either done or reach some stopping point.

So, for me, starting the first task is simply a force of will, focused on small, discrete steps. “Take a step down the hall. Open the office door. Pick up that folder. Sit down in your chair. Start up the computer. Do not start your web browser yet! Take out the first piece of paper. Enter the first number on that piece of paper into the tax software.” After that, I’m productive for the next couple of hours usually.

When I used to write for a living, sometimes I’d start typing about how I didn’t want to write, just to get me started typing. I could go back up and delete all my whining after I was done with something productive.

This strategy doesn’t work if I think too big or too abstract. I cannot make myself write a book or complete a tax return. Those are too big and too fuzzy. There are too many steps.

Part of making this work is to clear my work area of unnecessary distractions. Otherwise, I’ll tend to see things and get started on those instead.

I’m not so focused on schedules, but it is really important for me to feel like I’ve accomplished something. I have to break my work down into something that is measurable. If I’m working on a really long tax return, I break it down into steps like checking bank reconciliations and reconciling payroll returns against the P&L. When I wrote, I often checked page counts. When I spent four months of afternoons digging a koi pond in my backyard, I counted wheel-barrow loads of dirt and number of large rocks removed.

And, of course, you have to make sure you take care of yourself. Sometimes you need to sleep in. Sometimes medication is a bitch. If you’re not sure when something is a reasonable break, it might help to have another person to call and get their take on it.

20

When I really need to get shit done, I adopt a “rule of quarters”.

Way it works is this: I will work for exactly 45 minutes without stopping, then take a 15 minute break; rinse and repeat until the task is done or too tired to continue. During that 15 minutes I’ll do something totally different from the work - if I’m sitting at a computer typing stuff, for example, I’ll go for a walk around the block.

Different things work for different people, and I found this sort of self-imposed regime helpful.